You may have been seeing my refrain about Hungary for the last year or so— boot them out of NATO, not so much because Viktor Orbán is a fascist scumbag as because he’s a Putin ally. Yesterday, Andrew Desiderio reported that 2 senators have noticed as well. “Just days after they were snubbed by Hungary’s leaders during a visit to Budapest, Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) are set to unveil a Senate resolution condemning the NATO ally on a variety of fronts. The new measure, set to drop next week, lashes Hungary for democratic backsliding, its months-long delay in approving Sweden’s accession to NATO and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s closeness with Russia and China, according to the resolution text we obtained. It also notes that Hungary had pledged it wouldn’t be the last NATO member to sign off on Sweden’s membership in the military alliance, which it has now become. And the resolution accuses the country of “jeopardizing transatlantic security at a key moment for peace and stability in Europe.”
Orbán’s nationalist government has been hailed as a model by Trump and his allies. But it has come under increasing scrutiny from the West, with Orbán maintaining relations with Vladimir Putin and seeking to water down some of the European Union’s sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
The United States and other Western nations have been openly critical of Hungary in recent months because of its 18-month delay in ratifying Sweden’s NATO accession, which Shaheen and Tillis have argued undermines the alliance. Orbán has also come under fire for trying to suppress independent media and crack down on dissent.
The resolution chided Hungary for instituting “a law purportedly designed to protect the sovereignty of Hungary, but which actually serves as a tool to silence Hungarians who disagree with the current ruling party” in December.
This is a reference to a law passed in Hungary that the State Department said implements “draconian tools that can be used to intimidate and punish” critics of the Orbán government.
Since Orbán certainly shares every NATO secret with Putin, I don’t understand why the Senate is talking about giving him a laughable wrist slap instead of just suspending Hungary from the alliance. Which brings us to the Thomas Friedman column from yesterday, Trump’s GOP Is A Confederacy Of Fakers. “Trump,” he wrote, “could sell white flags at $1,000 a pop that say, ‘We surrendered Ukraine to Russia,’ autographed by him and the House and Senate MAGA sycophants he’s assembled to deny Ukrainians the weapons they need to stave off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught. For an extra $500, you could get a white flag autographed solely by Trump and J.D. Vance and emblazoned with Vance’s immortal words, ‘I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.’ Or one signed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, big enough to sum up his worldview: I was for Ukraine aid until I was against it, but I could be for it again if Trump is not against it. This is a matter of principle for me. Either way, it’s all Biden’s fault. And then the ultimate collector’s item. For an extra $1,000, a giant white surrender flag, made from the softest Sea Island cotton, signed by Lindsey Graham, that says: ‘I gave up the principles of John McCain and a free Ukraine because Trump told me to. But I got a round of golf at Trump’s West Palm Beach course. Can I still be on Meet the Press?’ The last gift comes with a pair of Trump’s new branded tennis shoes, guaranteed by Trump and personally tested by Graham, to be the fastest shoe on the market to run away from any ally or foe— or anything principled that you’ve ever said.”
“The possibilities,” he noted, “are endless, because Trump’s GOP has become bottomless. It now manifests an infinite willingness to engage in any form of crow eating, bootlicking, backtracking and backstabbing to stay in his good graces, no matter how crackpot, selfish or un-American his demand. Trump decides to just dump Ukraine? Bye-bye, Zelensky. Trump decides to toss aside months of bipartisan work to forge a grand bargain on immigration reform? Gone— no questions asked!”
No decent deal for Ukraine will be possible if we let Trump and his party just pull the plug on aid to Kyiv now. As my New York Times colleagues in Ukraine reported last week, the Ukrainian Army is now “engaged in a desperate fight to hold back the Russian onslaught… Across the entire 600-mile-long front, Ukraine is short on ammunition without renewed American military assistance, and it is struggling to replenish its own depleted forces after two years of brutal fighting.”
And have no doubt, if we did just surrender Ukraine, Putin’s next destination could be the Baltic States or Poland. But both are in NATO, which means we are obligated under Article 5 of the NATO treaty to defend them with our own soldiers and treasure. So surrendering Ukraine now could be one of the most expensive things we could do.
As Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, recently observed about Putin in the Financial Times: “With no checks on his capacity to make fatal mistakes, an aging Russian ruler surrounded by sycophants may embark on more reckless moves in coming years than anything we’ve seen so far. If the Kremlin believes that no major Western power has the resources and will to fight for minor allies like the Baltic States, it may be tempted to test NATO’s Article 5 commitment to collective defense.” Especially when Trump’s rhetoric “creates a dangerous illusion that America would not intervene if Putin uses military force to divide NATO,” he added.
We are watching two schools of U.S. foreign policy play out over Ukraine. One is the classic U.S. great-power approach, led by a president who grew up in the Cold War and built on a bedrock of American values and interests that have served us well since we entered World War II: We and our allies will negotiate with Putin, but only from a position of strength, not weakness. And our strength derives not just from our money and weapons but also from the fact that Biden has been able to assemble a Western coalition on Ukraine that amplifies our and our allies’ strength tenfold.
Trump, by contrast, often behaves as if he learned his world affairs not at Wharton but by watching World Wrestling Entertainment. So much of what he does is purely performative; it’s about looking strong, about talking tough and about fake body slams, in which everyone is fooled except our rivals.
For example, Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, claiming it was a giveaway by Barack Obama. But he did it with no diplomatic plan to secure a better deal and no strategic plan or allies to confront Iran if it exploited Trump’s move by pushing ahead toward a nuclear bomb. So Iran, which, under Obama, was being kept about a year away from having enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb, is now just a few weeks away. That’s what performative diplomacy gets you.
And that was before our allies had truly gotten to know how little Trump knows or values the Western alliance. A second time around, no one would trust him, so Trump’s “America First” strategy would almost certainly end up an “America Alone” strategy. If you think helping Ukraine is expensive today, try defending America against Russia, China and Iran— all by ourselves.
I am afraid of what this future holds, my fellow Americans, because Trump is a fake, Lindsey Graham is a fake and the GOP has become a cult with no coherent platform other than what side of the bed Trump woke up on, meaning it’s a fake. None of them will fight for anything any longer— other than staying in Trump’s good graces by saying whatever he tells them to say.
They are all trapped in a performative doom loop that has nothing to do with acting on our real interests. It’s only about performing for Trump and for his base to get more clicks, to get more donations, to get more votes, to get elected and then perform again for more clicks. Rinse and repeat— the actual world be damned.
It is all fake. Only our enemies are not fake.
No doubt Friedman would appreciate me noting that John Kennedy Toole’s brilliant, satirical Confederacy of Dunces explores themes such as alienation, absurdity and the clash between individualism and conformity. It follows the misadventures of protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, an eccentric New Orleans character who sees himself as a misunderstood intellectual battling against the perceived idiocy of the world around him. Through Ignatius and the, let's say "colorful" cast of characters he encounters, Toole satirizes various aspects of American society, from consumerism and conformity to the quest for status and success. His book is a critique of the absurdity and hypocrisy of alienated and alienating modern life, a commentary on the clash between individuality and societal expectations.
Like the cast of characters in Confederacy of Dunces, the freak show that makes up the MAGA movement— think Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Marjorie Traitor Greene and Trump himself— are primarily caricatures with exaggerated personalities, easily subject to satire and harsh criticism. The book and MAGA reflect aspects of societal tensions and frustrations— economic anxieties, cultural divides and a perceived loss of traditional values. The posthumously-published novel (written in 1969, published in 1980 after Toole’s suicide) explores the clash between individuality and societal expectations, with Ignatius representing a kind of antihero who refuses to conform to societal norms. Similarly, the MAGA movement, at its best, can be characterized by its emphasis on individualism, nationalism and a rejection of political correctness, always clashing with mainstream political and cultural institutions and norms.